When the Morning Glory Blooms (23 page)

Lydia suggested a formal dinner party with a table full of prospective contributors. She’d handle the guest list if I’d see to the food and prepare a compelling appeal about the value of my home for unwed mothers.

Its value? I wasn’t yet convinced of its wisdom. I wavered like a newborn colt, eager to run but handicapped by my own weaknesses and clumsiness. The meal would be the less taxing of the two chores.

For some reason, Lydia felt it necessary to keep the guest list from me. I was informed there would be twenty of us dining together on the chosen Saturday evening. That was all I knew.

Puff helped me put all three leaves in the thick-legged table in the dining room days ahead of time to allow me the opportunity to fuss and fiddle. A snowy damask tablecloth served as foundation. And upon it I would put what? The dishes we were content to use any other day seemed as coarse as burlap for this event, and woefully mismatched. Six milky blue. Seven
bright cobalt. A handful of white bread-and-butter plates. All hand-me-downs for which I’d once been grateful and now found embarrassing.

But not for long.

Dr. Noel paid an unexpected visit the afternoon of my fretting over the dishes. He was on his way home from setting the broken leg of a neighboring farm boy whose hayloft acrobatics cost him a bit of time off his feet. The family paid Dr. Noel in the currency in which they were accustomed to dealing—gooseberry preserves, pillow slips, and an odd assortment of china. Two of this, one of that, three of another—bowls and cups and saucers and plates. White, pale blue, and silver-rimmed.

“The preserves I intend to keep for myself,” he said. “But I have no use for the pillow slips or the plates. Could you use them?”

As so often happened, I’d been unable to create an answer to my need. Why had I assumed it was up to me? Why did I repeatedly falter when my own imagination ran dry of ideas? Didn’t I know by then that the Lord delights in surprising His children with answers beyond imagination?

Each of the twenty place settings was unique, a quality I hoped my guests would find more appealing than symmetry. From the scrap box, I pulled a generous remnant of soft yellow cotton fabric. Measuring carefully, I cut from it twenty equal squares for dinner napkins. Bachelor’s buttons and marigolds in milk-glass vases would help the setting look intentional, I prayed.

The flatware would accompany Lydia. Her mother’s. She promised to arrive early enough to have it safely tucked at each place before the first guest arrived.

My attention turned to the meal itself. Had I the foresight, I long ago would have recognized that Puff’s insistence on inviting his pig, Ham, to live with us was the divine preparation
for this very meal. Ham’s hams were well smoked and ready. Potatoes and beans from the garden. Pickled beets from the root cellar. Creamed cucumbers. Herbed biscuits with blue violet jelly. And apple-something for dessert.

The kitchen was a laboratory for apple experiments. When the harvest is plentiful, the laborers must be creative. Caramel apple cobbler with thick clouds of whipped cream seemed just the thing to sweeten and soothe the guests’ stomachs before they were subjected to my financial appeal.

When young women lived with me, they worked beside me because their help was needed and because work is both healing and character building. At the time of the dinner party, I was alone in the house, more particularly in the kitchen.

Until Josiah Grissom arrived.

I never asked what prompted him to show up at my door two hours ahead of schedule. I was learning not to question the miraculous. As organized as I thought myself to be, the enormity of the task was overwhelming, a fact made evident by the flour-strewn but aromatic chaos in my kitchen.

Josiah shed his tailored jacket and silk tie, rolled up the sleeves of his crisp white shirt, and tucked a linen dish towel into his waistband for an apron.

“What can I do to help?” Six beautiful words! I may have wondered at his prowess in culinary endeavors, but I did not doubt his sincerity.

“Peel potatoes?”

“Are you asking if I can or if I will?”

“Both.”

“Yes. And yes.” He brushed a smudge of flour off my cheek before tackling the mound of freshly scrubbed potatoes. I think  . . .  yes  . . .  I can still feel the sweet pressure of that brief touch.

We worked in silence, for the most part. Puff joined us from time to time, lured by the heavenly aroma of the smoked ham
and the hope that he might help taste test. He offered to start the coffee, a task I would’ve forgotten in my fervor to get all the food hot and ready for the table at the same time.

Puff and Josiah collaborated quietly as we neared the end of our efforts and as the clock crept closer to the appointed time for guests to arrive. Josiah took the pan of biscuits from my hands and shooed me upstairs to pull my frazzled self together, claiming that the two men had things well in hand.

One glance in the upstairs hall mirror told me I should have allowed more time for primping. My face was flushed and glistening. My hair hung limp and windblown, although the only wind I’d faced was self-generated as I’d flown from project to project. My work dress held evidence of every dish to which I’d put my hands.

I could hear the Kinneys’ buggy wheels in the drive as I stepped out of my dress and into the navy skirt and white blouse Lydia always said was too “school marmish” for me. She was probably right. But my choices were limited, as was time. I wrestled with my hair, frustrated with its cumbersome weight and stubbornness. I quickly redid its braiding and let the braid hang down my back, fearful that I would miss the arrival of my guests if I took the time to pin it up. The wide navy satin ribbon from a hand-me-down hat held strays in place at the top of my braid. A small silk sunflower from the same hat became a brooch at my neck. Not until I began my descent down the stairs did I realize that I’d dressed myself to look like the dining table.

Josiah—fully dressed and none the worse for wear—and Pastor Kinney were conversing in the front parlor when I reached the bottom of the stairs. The faint clink of silverware and china let me know where Lydia was occupied. Puff had disappeared. Pastor Kinney called to us from the parlor,
inviting us to share a brief season of prayer before the other guests arrived. Prayer, balm I needed.

Grateful again for divine timing, I raised my eyes following Pastor Kinney’s decisive “Amen!” to see the dust clouds of an approaching carriage that was turning into my drive.

Puff had shaved! I’d never seen his face clean shaven. Or the black suit coat and collarless white shirt he wore over his best wool pants.

I’m certain some of our guests were startled that Puff did not slip into a servant role but into the chair Lydia offered him at the table. Had any of them voiced a whimper of complaint, or even raised an eyebrow, I might have embarrassed myself with rage. The room grew noticeably quieter, but Puff nodded toward the other seated guests, who nodded back, and the moment passed.

Around the table with me sat my Mount Everest. Five of them were already friends: Puff, Josiah, Pastor and Mrs. Kinney, and Dr. Noel. Each of them already gave to the effort more than I would ever have dared to ask. That reduced the number of potential donors to fourteen. The unconvinced out-numbered the convinced.

Some moments are etched in our memories as if chiseled there, not just written in pale ink on a colorless, thin page. I have lost much of the conversation of that evening. I can’t tell you what comments were made about the food or the weather. But I clearly remember two incredible moments. Pastor Kinney rose, as if to pray for the meal we were about to enjoy.

“Anna, with your permission, I’d like to ask Josiah to lead us in prayer.”

It seemed to me an act of pure-hearted humility for the spiritual leader of our community to recognize and defer to his brother in Christ, his friend and mine, such a key figure in the success of this endeavor. And oh, the words that came from Josiah’s mouth—no, heart—that night. I was certain the ceiling was raised several inches by the power of his prayer propelled heavenward.

Shortly following Josiah’s robust but reverent “Amen,” Lydia nodded toward the doorway. I followed the path of her sparkling eyes to find two of “my” girls standing ready to serve. They wore shy but grateful smiles. Beyond a gentle roundedness that defined them as women, their work-trimmed bodies bore no tell-tale reminders of the babies they’d birthed here less than six months earlier. But I read it in their faces, in those beautiful, humble faces. They were mothers now  . . .  and it had changed them forever.

Both Meg and Dania had chosen to keep their babies  . . .  with my blessing. They were not flighty, fantasy-minded young women. Their decisions were carefully weighed. They chose to share a small house in town, and to share caring for their children—Meg watching Dania’s bright-eyed little son while his mother worked part-time for the Witherspoons, and Dania caring for Meg’s darling daughter so she could fill orders for sewing and alterations  . . .  skills she’d learned under my roof, I noted with joy just short of pride.

Life did not hold the promise of ease for them. I couldn’t let myself think long on the hardships that lay ahead, but I admired their determination to love and care for their children.

And now they stood in the doorway of my dining room, prepared to serve me and my guests—guests I hoped would help fund the next few months of operation, the next few young women who needed shelter. A cyclic gift. A moment I keep tucked in a pocket of memory near my heart.

It crossed my mind to wonder who was tending their little ones. Then an intersecting thought—Lydia would have seen to that detail.

As they bent over the guests, serving us graciously, bringing platters of food from the kitchen, refreshing water glasses, pouring tea and coffee, removing plates, and serving dessert, it struck me that the home and its work was not the reason for the dinner party.

Certainly I was not.
They
were. These reclaimed lives. These grace-bought women who would go home to healthy children at the evening’s conclusion. As they brushed past me, their very presence strengthened my resolve.

The dinner party retired to the front parlor following dessert. Meg and Dania stayed behind to clear the table. I took them aside for a brief moment.

“How can I express my gratitude to you?”

Both girls objected and attempted to throw the gratitude back my direction.

“Please leave the mess in the kitchen and go home to your babies.”

Dania answered me with a lingering hug, and whispered that they would be praying for me. I would need it.

It has been my observation that those whom the Lord calls to an unusual task are rarely blessed with a passion for drumming up the dollars to support that calling. I then had (and still have) no stomach for fund-raising. I understand the need and the value, but it is a joyless, unnerving task for me, no matter how noble the cause.

The night of the dinner party—the first of many to follow, I now know—my heart raced, as frantic and directionless as the water bugs skating on the surface of the creek backwater. My stomach relocated ten inches north, pressing rudely against
my throat, hampering my ability both to speak and to swallow. Hospitality was easy to feign. A calm spirit, impossible.

“Breathe, Anna.” Josiah’s whisper and smile could be hawked as nerve tonic. “No one here was forced to come. They’re here because they care, or they are at the least curious. They didn’t respond to a gun barrel pressed to their backs, or merely to Lydia’s sociable invitation, but to the wooing of the Holy Spirit and the pull of compassion for the women who flee to this city of refuge.”

City of refuge. The picture Josiah painted with his words eclipsed the illustration I’d planned to use. With the clink of silver on china and the music of companionable conversation swirling around me, I mentally rewrote my plea.

“Until just a few minutes ago,” I began when I’d gained my guests’ attention, “I was unaware that God wrote about this house in His Word. Thousands of years ago, He established the concept of cities of refuge to which His children could run when their passions or inattentiveness or carelessness or clumsiness got them into trouble. The Lord designed cities of refuge not for the innocent but for those whose actions caused pain, even death. In these designated refuges, the guilty found safety, help, and hope. It was God’s design.

“Even before Adam and Eve sinned against Him, God set in motion the plan by which He could offer them forgiveness, redemption. In this birthing home, forgiveness is reproduced.

“I don’t pretend that the women who come to me are innocent victims of circumstance, although some are. Most made foolish choices. They broke God’s laws. This house and my arms are offered as a city of refuge for them, a place where they and their babies can find what they most need. Healing. Protection. Love that makes it safe to explore the possibility of forgiveness  . . .  and self-forgiveness. Within these walls they
gain tools to help them face future temptations fully armed and equipped to resist rather than fall prey to their deceptions.